How I’m Using Scaffold to Build (and Rebuild) My Own Sites

It’s been a busy few months behind the scenes, so I wanted to share a quick update on what I’ve been working on. I’ve finally started porting the blog functionality from chrisshennan.com into Scaffold, and it’s nearly ready to go live. Alongside that, I’ve been brainstorming plans for Reachable Link, a digital business card platform, and found myself contributing to IndieDevUse.com in the process.

This newsletter dives into the updates, the projects, and how I’m using Scaffold to glue it all together.

Hope you enjoy! - Chris

Scaffold - Upcoming Feature: Blog

For ages, I’ve been putting off migrating the blog functionality from chrisshennan.com into Scaffold. Originally, I wanted to wait until I had some payment features ready on one of my projects, but when I added the documentation section to BuildWithScaffold.com, I realised it was already using most of the same core features. At that point, it just felt like the right time to start moving the blog over.

I’ve also been wanting to spin up a blog on BuildWithScaffold.com to share updates, showcase new features, outline the short-term roadmap, and share my thoughts on the product’s direction. Not having a blog was becoming a real bottleneck.

I’m almost there — the admin CRUD and public list and view pages are all built. I’ve added a simple author entity too (something I don’t have on chrisshennan.com since it’s just me).

The last big piece is adding the ability to paste images directly from the clipboard into the editor, with automatic upload — much like how GitHub and GitLab handle issue descriptions.

Once that’s done, I’ll migrate chrisshennan.com into a Scaffold project. This will be me dog-fooding Scaffold even more, keeping me focused on making the foundation rock solid.

The transition will mean my personal site will lose some SEO features at first (like OG tags, Twitter Cards, JSON-LD schema), but that’s a useful nudge to get those baked into Scaffold properly.

Reachable Link: A Prospective Next Project

I was recently approached about reachable.link with the idea of using it for digital business cards for a client’s team. That really fired me up — exactly the kind of user I’d imagined when I bought the domain.

So far, all that’s there is a simple holding page with a single digital business card — mine. But I’m excited to roll out a Scaffold project for this and get started properly.

I can already see how it’ll leverage Scaffold’s existing features — Docker builds, CI pipelines, pre-configured production templates, and the waitlist system. It’ll also be a chance to bring together features I’ve built across various scattered projects — like the static site generator I use for passwordangel.co.

Once integrated into Scaffold, the static site generator will tie nicely into other parts of the ecosystem — like the blog or documentation — to generate static versions of pages for better performance.

I’m even thinking about writing a blog post or case study on using Scaffold and Symfony to build a blog locally, then deploy it as a static site with the generator. If that sounds interesting, just let me know!

IndieDevUse - Discover What Apps and Tools Indie Developers Use

I came across IndieDevUse.com in my BlueSky feed, a neat little site that showcases the tools and tech stacks indie developers are using. What caught my attention wasn’t just the content - it was how it was being curated.

Instead of building out the usual register/login flow, IndieDevUse takes a refreshingly open-source approach: if you want to be featured, you submit a pull request. Simple.

I’m guessing part of this choice is to keep the project lightweight and low-maintenance. But more importantly, it feels right for the audience. Most indie devs already have a GitHub account, so there’s no new platform to sign up for. No onboarding funnel. Just fork, edit, PR. It keeps contributors in their natural habitat - inside the code - not filling out forms.

This really caught my attention, and I wanted to add my own profile. Since I run everything through Docker and didn’t want to install pnpm locally, I put together a small Dockerfile to handle it. I also wrote a quick guide in case any other indie hackers want to take a similar approach.

The result: my profile on IndieDevUse.com

My Latest Blog Posts

While working on Scaffold, I’ve run into a few snags and sparked some new ideas along the way. Some of these turned into blog posts — like handling dynamic subdomains (as used on noticeboards.info) and troubleshooting Docker conflicts with PhpStorm. I’ve linked them below in case you missed them.

I’m always curious to hear what tools, frameworks, or workflows other indie devs are using. If you’re working on something cool (or have questions about Scaffold, or anything else I mentioned), hit reply and let’s chat!

Many Thanks.

Chris Shennan
https://chrisshennan.com